On April 22, 2009 at 12:15 pm Eastern, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society will webcast Professor Richard Susskind speaking about his predictions for how the digital revolution will impact lawyers and law schools. - K
FreeRice.com, a website that helps you to improve your vocabulary while you provide food for the hungry, has been around for almost a year now. Supported by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the United Nations World Food Program, FreeRice.com has raised over 44 billion grains of rice, which is enough to provide over 2 million days worth of food for hungry people. It's a great example of how one website can have a powerful impact.
When I visited the site recently, I noticed that they had added additional subjects: world capitals, chemical symbols, and non-English languages (Spanish, German, Italian, and French). I suspect that for most legal aid attorneys, chemical symbols aren't particularly useful, but if you are working on improving any second or third languages, this is a great way to build vocabulary and to do some good at the same time. - K
The Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center just launched a legal guide for citizen media creators. The CMLP guide covers a range of legal issues, including forming a business online, newsgathering and privacy, intellectual property and risks associated with publishing online. The site also has an nice search feature and a state map that allows you to filter content for your state. -M [Thanks, Allison.]
The week before last I spent some time at the 2008 Virtual Worlds and Virtual Law Conference here in New York. (A warm thanks to Ben Duranske, author of the Virtually Blind blog and a new book on virtual law, for making it possible.) I attended a few different sessions, ranging from an interesting discussion on intellectual property issues (yes, you can trademark your avatar, complete with "TM" bling) to a panel on bringing your organization into virtual worlds, which provided tips on getting started (know your virtual audience) and prompted a candid discussion of ROI (stickiness is a big metric).
It was really interesting to see the range of audiences that are being targeted, from the preschool set to older adults, as well as the range of companies that are making the jump. And while the driving force behind virtual worlds seems very entertainment focused, there is also a good deal of energy being put into creating virtual worlds (or projects within virtual worlds) that focus on more worthy pursuits, like education and advocacy.
In fact, one project that should be of interest to our community is the work that former statewide website coordinator Gene Koo (blog) is doing with the Berkman Center and CALI to create virtual environments that facilitate legal instruction and collaboration among law school professors. For more on the intersection of law and virtual worlds, check out the excellent book, The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds, and the State of Play conference website, which includes podcasts and webcasts of past conferences (also available on iTunes U). -M
Clay Shirky discusses his new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The big bullet point: group action just got easier. Here is the link to the video. -M
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